The page would have cost me 60 euros worth of data in Cuba. If I pressed refresh, because something didn't load? 120 euros.

I wonder, how does one survive on the "modern" internet in a place like that? I feel i would die a little inside. Seems the only reliable way would be to navigate with everything disabled, even images, and manually (or automatically) allow images that are of certain types (no gifs) / size (not too big) and etc.

I mean, that sounds so bad that i would argue you shouldn't even see the 50mb gif in that page, at all - ie it's your own fault. If your browsing "the web" with such a restrictive data plan you're playing russian roulette. It's only a matter of time before some JS heavy site or some blog with a gif "takes you down". Sure, sites waste a ton of data all over the place, but it's not their responsibility to "protect" you imo. You can't trust others to do that job. The browser vendors should be, or something.

Apparently, there's a "weekly package" of videos, articles, and so forth that's used by 80% of Cubans. Distributed on memory sticks or external drives.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/01/05/374986028/l...

As we did before the "overly bloated a.k.a modern" web, which is pretty much as you described: disable all the superfluous (images, scripts, css, iframes, webrtc, etc.) and enable one by one those you actually want.

Better, faster, more secure browsing experience.

The issue is in the bloated websites to begin with. Which usually means that if one website is bloated, you just skip it.

Yeah, mobile phone apps which care about data are what you need to use. eg. use the gmail app instead of the gmail website. The opera browser is the best for expensive data general web browsing. Then you set up traffic limits.

The main way to protect yourself is to turn off the internet and enjoy life.

Really off-topic, but: Are there (tech) news-sites which do not have this 10-100MB bloat with three js framweorks and gifs, ads and whatnot? I'd gladly pay for a minimalist news source...

>Are there (tech) news-sites which do not have this 10-100MB bloat with three js framweorks and gifs, ads and whatnot?

The HackerNews comment section, with the added benefit of it being more informative.

It's kind of a PIA, but I enjoy using umatrix and ublock origin. Allows me to only turn on the stuff that I want.

There's AMP, if you don't mind trading one set of problems for another.

You could do what I do and open them in Links/Lynx, a command-line browser. You only need the text, anyways, right?

i'll compare that with ublock/umatrix. thanks!

It could have hidden data, or not.